Skype is amazing. I just had a chat with my parents on Skype via WiFi (they've just moved from Virginia to the Philippines, where they have dual citizenship). I was amazed at the clarity of the picture (she has an iPad, I was chatting with her on my iPhone). It was the exact same experience as the times we've chatted over Skype between Phoenix and Virginia. To top it off, it was totally free.
It will still be a big adjustment for me. It's not that I see my parents very often -- an annual week at Nags Head beach, an occasional visit during the winter, and I've never been all that great at the weekly phone call (sometimes a month will go by when I realize I hadn't called them). But they aren't a 5-hour domestic flight away anymore. Checking Kayak.com, it would take at least 24 hours of flying time to get to them (more like 36).
But modern times call for modern measures. My mother was the one that got me up and running on Facebook. I haven't spent any time on FB for more than a year, but I've decided I should relearn how FB works (with all the nuances of privacy, groups and sharing) since it's a good way to share some kind of interaction with my parents.
So I was playing around on Facebook today, and was looking at all of Mom and Dad's photo's stored there, and found this:
The photo was taken on September 18 1964 at the World's Fair. At the time this picture was taken, I was two years old, living with my grandmother in the Philippines. My father had just come to the US as a resident/intern for Johns Hopkins. My parents are much younger then than I am now. It is a very weird feeling.
I miss my parents already.